978
Opinion of O'Connor, J.
suit to the conclusion that we are creating a "stalemate" by requiring the States to "get things just right," post, at 1063 (Souter, J., dissenting), or to draw "the precise compact district that a court would impose in a successful § 2 challenge," post, at 1035 (Stevens, J., dissenting); see also Shaw II, ante, at 949 (Stevens, J., dissenting). Rather, we adhere to our longstanding recognition of the importance in our federal system of each State's sovereign interest in implementing its redistricting plan. See Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U. S. 146, 156 (1993) ("[I]t is the domain of the States, and not the federal courts, to conduct apportionment in the first place"); Miller, supra, at 915 ("It is well settled that reapportionment is primarily the duty and responsibility of the State") (internal quotation marks omitted). Under our cases, the States retain a flexibility that federal courts enforcing § 2 lack, both insofar as they may avoid strict scrutiny altogether by respecting their own traditional districting principles, and insofar as deference is due to their reasonable fears of, and to their reasonable efforts to avoid, § 2 liability. And nothing that we say today should be read as limiting "a State's discretion to apply traditional districting principles," post, at 1046 (Souter, J., dissenting), in majority-minority, as in other, districts. The constitutional problem arises only from the subordination of those principles to race.
Strict scrutiny remains, nonetheless, strict. The State must have a "strong basis in evidence" for finding that the threshold conditions for § 2 liability are present:
"first, 'that [the minority group] is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single member district'; second, 'that it is politically cohesive'; and third, 'that the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it . . . usually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate.' " Growe, supra, at 40 (emphasis added) (quoting Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30, 50-51 (1986)).
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